Star Wars with occasional sarcasm

Tag Archives: comics

On the comic shipping lists for Wednesday is the first of a new limited series, Rebel Heist #1. The Han-centric story is penned by Matt Kindt. Also out is the seventh Dark Times trade collection, A Spark Remains.

In stores now, because I am a ding-a-ling and haven’t done a releases post in a couple weeks, is Star Wars #16 and the paperback of Tim Lebbon’s Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void, a novel based on the Dawn of the Jedi comics. I liked it, even going in with no background on the era, and gave it a B+ when it came out in hardcover last year.

Out this week is the sequel to one of the few Star Wars books your non-Star Wars obsessive friends (assuming they’re drama/English geeks or drama/English geek-adjacent) have read. Yes, William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back will be in stores today.

Our next novel is the paperback release of Tim Lebbon’s Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void on April 1, with J.W. Rinzler’s Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy on May 13. And the drama/English geeks will get William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return on July 1. The cover was recently revealed on Cnet.

Although I do love alternate universe stories, I was pretty disappointed in the three actual Infinities stories that Dark Horse put out back in the early ’00s: None of them really pinged me as being particularly interesting takes on the concept. Peter David’s, on the other hand…

Comic Book Resources has the skinny on the never-produced mini-series, which would have divulged from the movie timeline with the droids at Tatooine and ended with Leia ruling the galaxy – with Luke as her consort.

I gotta say, I was furious when Lucasfilm kicked it back. The whole reason I’d taken on the assignment was because I’d been told that Lucasfilm had effectively given us carte blanche. But then, after I drafted the outline, they turned around and said that the story had to end with Luke, Leia and Han triumphing over evil. In other words, it had to have the same exact ending as Star Wars. It’s a crying shame. The cover image to issue #2, with a close shot of Princess Leia in the Darth Maul face make-up glaring out at the reader, would’ve been killer.

CBR even got artist Nick Perks to mock up that cover, at right.

Explains a lot about why the resulting series’ ended up being so dull. What’s the point of an AU if you don’t go in the really weird directions? (As opposed to the downright laughable ones.) Fanfic, how you’ve spoiled us. (via)

It’s been a week since the news went out that the Star Wars comics license will go to Marvel Comics for 2015, leaving Dark Horse Comics after a twenty-two year run. With the news on Tuesday that Dark Horse will be releasing a new series, adapting the unproduced The Clone Wars scripts for the finale of the Darth Maul storyline, we know that 2014 will still be a big Star Wars year for Dark Horse. Over the course of the past week, questions about the switch have started to get some answers, at least from Dark Horse:

Marvel will take over the Star Wars comics license in 2015, StarWars.com announced this afternoon.

Marvel was the original comics home of the franchise, publishing Star Wars #1 in March 1977. There was plenty of speculation dating from almost the moment the Disney sale was announced that the license would return to Marvel. Dark Horse is the third-largest comics publisher, but Marvel is one of the big 2 – and perhaps more importantly, Disney also owns them.

Despite their history with Marvel, when Star Wars was beginning a renaissance in the early 90’s, Dark Horse was awarded the license. They’ve published a great many influential series over the years, from Dark Empire and Tales of the Jedi early on to fan-favorites like Legacy, Knights of the Old Republic and the new Star Wars series. Of the current ongoing series, Brian Wood’s Star Wars will end at #20, while Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko’s Legacy will end with #18.

I don’t know enough about Marvel to speculate on what they may do with the franchise, but it’s safe to say that Dark Horse was one of the more beloved licensees in fandom. They’ve always been willing to innovate and look outside the box, and there’s no doubt a lot of fear out there in fandom, no matter how expected this may have been. We’ve become very attached to the folks over there, from editor Randy Stradley on down, and it’s sad to see the end coming on that partnership.

“Dark Horse revolutionized the treatment of comics based on films,” company founder Mike Richardson said in a statement. “After a history of movie properties being poorly handled with little regard for execution and continuity, Dark Horse took a new approach, carefully choosing licenses and approaching them with excitement and creative energy. Our goal was to create sequels and prequels to the films we loved, paying careful attention to quality and detail, essentially treating those films as though they were our own.”

There’s no doubt that Dark Horse has changed the game and set a pretty high standard for a fandom that doesn’t take things lying down. Will Marvel manage to build on that success? Here’s hoping.

News. Dark Horse revealed a new miniseries by Mind MGMT’s Matt Kindt, Rebel Heist, on Comic Book Resources last week. The four-issue series starts with a Han Solo issue in April and will feature art by Marco Castiello (Purge.)

Excerpt. There’s a bunch of Maul: Lockdown available at Random House’s catalog.